“When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own house, his possessions are safe …” Father Bertrand, a Catholic priest and expert in martial arts, must have long meditated on this quote from Luke (11:21). And on Friday morning, the 48-year-old cleric finally had a chance to live the gospel.
Father Bertrand was woken by noises from his chapel residence in Drancy, a suburb east of Paris, and found himself face-to-face with a burglar, who attacked him and broke a glass bottle over his head, Le Point reports. The robber couldn’t have expected that before he’d entered the priesthood, Father Bertrand had been a trained judo master.
Police arrived quickly, fearing the worst after two ISIS terrorists killed a priest in a church in Normandy in late July. But when they reached the church, the priest had the 45-year-old assailant firmly in control. Father Bertrand “used some well-chosen holds that immobilized him on the ground,” a town official told journalists. Amen and ippon to that.